Ecuador ready to grant asylum to Assange, source says

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has agreed to grant WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange asylum, according to an official.
"Ecuador will grant asylum to Julian Assange," an unnamed official in the Ecuadorian capital Quito told the British newspaper The Guardian, which published the report on its website on Tuesday.
However, the Ecuadorian president has denied the report.
"The rumor of asylum for Assange is false. No decision has yet been taken. Awaiting report from the Foreign Ministry," Correa wrote on Twitter.
In an attempt to avoid extradition to Sweden, Assange, 41, sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on June 19 and applied for political asylum.
He had embarked on a marathon round of court battles but finally exhausted all his options under British law in June when the Supreme Court rejected his appeal against extradition.
The Ecuadorian official, who has knowledge of the discussions, said the embassy had discussed Assange's asylum request. He also stated that the British government "discouraged the idea" and the Swedish government was "not very collaborative."
The official added, "We see Assange's request as a humanitarian issue. The contact between the Ecuadorian government and WikiLeaks goes back to May 2011, when we became the first country to see the leaked US Embassy cables completely declassified… It is clear that when Julian entered the embassy there was already some sort of deal. We see in his work a parallel with our struggle for national sovereignty and the democratization of international relations."
The WikiLeaks founder was accused of committing rape and other sexual crimes in Sweden after the whistleblower made US “secret” and “top secret” documents publicly available on the website, despite intense efforts by US officials to stop him.
Assange has maintained that he is innocent and claims the allegations against him are politically motivated. He says that if he is extradited to Sweden, the authorities there could hand him over to the United States, where he could be prosecuted for his role in leaking classified documents.
KA/AS/HGL